


Detangling

by hippocrates460



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Hairbrushing, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, hospital fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:47:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22907233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460
Summary: ForPerverse_Idyll's prompt:Minerva or Severus gets their hair brushed for any reason you please, by any character except the Marauders or Voldemort (unless your muse absolutely insists it must be one of them)
Relationships: Minerva McGonagall & Arabella Figg
Comments: 26
Kudos: 23
Collections: HP Kinkfest 2020





	Detangling

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to [Icarus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusinflight/pseuds/icarusinflight) and [Lilian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilian) for help and hyping <3

“Arabella,” Minerva says, on a breath out, as she pushes herself up to sitting. Her back is stiff, and she feels clammy and sore, wants to ask the shuffling Squib to leave her alone. Minerva has been struggling to concentrate on her book enough to read since she stopped being able to ignore the pain enough to sleep, and feels like she smells of St Mungo’s potions and despair.

“Minerva,” she answers, looking around to check that they’re alone, and when she closes the door behind her she stands up straight. It’s an odd transformation to witness, from inoffensive to quite a presence, and it captivates Minerva’s attention. She’s never seen this side of her before. “I’ve brought you some things,” Arabella says, as she sets her trolley bag down in the middle of the room and starts unpacking it with surprising ease, considering she must be older than Minerva. It’s a bit hard to look away from the thing, aggressively Muggle with its six wheels to manage steps and stairs, and the horrid multi-coloured cats printed all over it. 

“Thank you,” she says, as she forces herself to look at cards and chocolates and even a little stuffed mouse. Must be the Order’s well-wishes. 

“Oh,” Arabella says, “that one’s mine.” She takes the cat toy and stuffs it into her pocket, and Minerva almost reaches out to snatch it back. Settles instead with her hands tight around her book. Without asking Arabella takes the visitor’s chair and settles down on it. “Now if anyone asks,” she says, “my brother and you were quite close at Hogwarts, and we’ve had a bit of correspondence since he passed, so when I heard you’d fallen ill…” 

Minerva understands what’s being asked of her. “Naturally.”

“I’ll tell you, I remember the last time I was in hospital,” Arabella says, clever brown eyes looking up at Minerva, the fly-away grey hair framing her face and softening it. “And I was  _ rank _ .”

She can’t help but laugh, and it hurts her ribs, so she winces, which hurts too. “Yes,” Minerva agrees. “We have cleaning spells of course.”

Arabella makes a face. “It’s been a while but I do remember. It’s not the same.” She sits up, looks Minerva up and down. “They say you’ll be released tomorrow, that you’ll be going back to Hogwarts.”

“The Healers think I shouldn’t,” Minerva says. “But I want to see the children before they leave for summer.”

“Appearances,” Arabella agrees, and Minerva remembers her brother. Years above her, Ravenclaw. Martin? Michael? Dead before he was thirty, like too many of them. “Now what do you say?”

“Sorry?”

“I’m offering to help,” she says, slow and frowning, like she’s wondering if Minerva hit her head too. “That’s a bathroom, isn’t it?” She nods to the other door in the room, the one that doesn’t go to the hallway. It is.

With a sharp nod, Minerva turns, tries to get her legs out from under the covers so she can stand up, and Arabella finds the shower basket amongst her things on the little desk. 

“Mm,” says Arabella, rather disapprovingly. Minerva fights harder against the sheets, against her useless ribs, and manages finally to get her legs out, toes touching the cold floor. She’s breathing heavily already. A hand on her shoulder stops her from trying to stand. “May I?” says Arabella, a bit close to her neck. Her breath is warm, she smells like coffee and cats.

“Sure,” Minerva agrees, a little shiver at the prickle of the contact, thinking Arabella will walk around and offer a hand. Instead her bun gets fixed into place with one hand, while fingers dig through her hair, searching for pins. She feels her bun loosening, ignores the feeling that rises in her throat at knowing she couldn’t put a bun back together if she tried. It’d been last done up by Poppy when she’d visited. At least - two days ago? Minerva shivers as she imagines what she must look like, when her braid doesn’t drop down as it should, needs untangling first. She smells herself, fear and sweat and now the grease of her unwashed hair, and tears that have nothing to do with the way her hair pulls burn behind her eyes.

Her braid gets undone, untangled, and then Arabella stops. “Shall I?” she asks, again puffing hot air against Minerva’s exposed shoulder, and she holds her hand out to where Minerva can see it. Her hairbrush. Minerva nods to accept and then lets her head get pushed forward. With sharp, practiced tugs, Arabella starts at the bottom. It hurts and when Minerva can’t help but pull away on a wince, she gets a swat with the back of the brush against her shoulder for her trouble. The sharp  _ tfwap _ cuts her breath, it didn’t exactly hurt and still her skin glows hot. “Sit still,” Arabella demands, not unkindly but very much stern. And Minerva tries but she struggles to breathe, too hot all over, not close enough to the ground to get purchase. Unmoored, her mouth dry. 

She thinks of how Arabella must’ve been the only one available to come drop off things from the Order because she won’t be busy until Harry goes home for summer. Remembers the last time they saw each other, when she’d sat at the back of the room knitting the whole time. How different she is now and Minerva can't seem to swallow properly. “So I just got back from the most wonderful place,” Arabella says, while Minerva fights not to pull away, like she’s trying to distract her from how it hurts. As if the pain is what is bothering Minerva. “Have you ever been to Chicago?”

She chats about the latest show she went to, how her favourite cats performed, how one of the kittens she’d bred made it to the finale, and it does work. Minerva barely notices it at first, and then slowly the steady pulling at the knots starts to soothe her. She leans into it a little, even shuffles back so she can be closer to where Arabella is methodically separating her hair, working through strands, and then checking them over for any stray knots. Her back aches from the injury and the added effort of trying to sit still, and Minerva searches for something else to focus on a bit desperately. Finds only the steady tingling of her skin as the brush passes, and the spot where she’d been hit with the brush. She flushes at the embarrassment of it, hot all over, like she’s a schoolgirl shifting impatiently in her seat as her hair is braided. When the brushing against her thin nightshirt and her back stops, and a hand passes over her ear and gathers up the hair to brush closer to Minerva’s scalp, she shivers again. Differently though, now that she’s feeling warm and pleasantly tingly. She tries to control her breathing, which is a little fast, and the squirming sensation in her stomach protests.

“Is this hurting you?” Arabella interrupts herself to say, and her voice is low and warm. 

“N-no, not too much,” Minerva manages. She can’t help but sound affected, and the little huff of amusement that comes from behind her feels like goosebumps on her skin. 

“Were you about to start purring there?” she asks, gentle and friendly, but Minerva blushes. The brushing doesn’t stop, but the rasp of the brush on her scalp makes a noise that is only just on the right side of too much. “That’s alright,” Arabella soothes, “it’s alright to enjoy it.”

That helps, and slowly Minerva relaxes into it again, lets go of the tightness in her chest as well as she can. Surely all the knots must be gone by now, the brush hasn’t snagged on anything in a while, but Arabella makes long strokes, from the top of her head all the way down. Arabella’s hands feel soft and warm when they touch Minerva’s face, to push the hair away or tilt her head. The brush crackles a little, at the ends, static from being dry and dirty, and suddenly Minerva remembers she was supposed to shower. 

She sits up a little, tries to say something and finds that she was drifting so nicely that it takes two tries. “Don’t want to keep you,” she says, and Arabella laughs again.

“I don’t mind, kitten,” she says, but she sets the brush down and walks around the bed, looks down at Minerva with warm eyes. They’re breathing in tandem, Minerva notices, deep and steady, and when she grabs Arabella’s hand and lets herself be pulled up to standing, even her back feels less sore. “There we go,” Arabella murmurs.

There’s a chair in the shower, a very ugly one, but Minerva is grateful for it. She needs help to get her nightshirt off, and her shoulders ache from trying to lift her arms even that amount. She sits down with care, and Arabella gently tugs her hair free from between her back and the chair. Turns on the showerhead and makes sure the temperature is comfortable by holding her hand under it. With a grace Minerva would have never expected from her, Arabella tilts Minerva’s chin, wets her hair thoroughly, then lets her hold the showerhead and she works the shampoo. It feels divine on her already sensitive scalp, and she can’t help but groan as her heavy wet hair is folded over her shoulder, and gentle nails scratch right where her neck begins and up. Arabella doesn’t laugh this time, she keeps going. By the time the showerhead is taken back, Minerva feels slow and heavy, even where the uncomfortable chair hurts. She has to blink against the harsh light, the echo of the water on the tiles. A soapy flannel gets pushed over every inch of her skin as she gets manoeuvred this way and that, and before she knows it, her foot is set back down and Arabella takes the showerhead again. Minerva stares at the ceiling as she imagines the soap suds flowing off of her, covering the floor of the little bathroom, twirling away through the drain. Her arms feel heavy, and so does her head. The steam has filled her lungs, makes the air taste different, and her joints hurt less.

“There you are,” Arabella says, bringing her back to the task at hand gently, after switching the shower off. She helps Minerva to stand, and then balances her against her shoulder when she wobbles. 

“Actually,” Minerva says, when she remembers how long it is likely to be before she can shower again, “would you let me… I feel a bit soapy still.”

Arabella steadies her, then turns the shower back on and hands the showerhead over. Minerva’s cheeks feel hot as she runs the stream over herself one last time, and then uses her hand and the showerhead to clean where Arabella hadn’t. “That’s - that’s it.” She says when she’s done.

“Lean on the wall for a second,” Arabella says, and the water that Minerva squeezes from her hair clatters loudly in the small space while Arabella fetches a towel and her bathrobe. “What else do you need?” She doesn’t look at Minerva any particular way, but something shifts as Minerva stands naked and dripping and finally clean. Her wet hair is heavy against her back and she feels no pull to do anything at all, really. Like there are no needs left. She reminds herself that she should move, though, so she shrugs on the bathrobe, and accepts the towel.

With a wave of her hand the mirror clears up, and Minerva looks at herself for the first time in days. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are wide and dark, the white towel is balanced on her head, held in place only barely by its own weight and five decades of practice. She looks like herself, just tired, feels it too. “My toiletry bag?” she asks, and Arabella hands it to her so she can find her lotion, her cream. For the sake of completion she brushes her teeth too, and then she feels fully exhausted.

Arabella helps her over to the bed, and sits her down. Before she can shuffle over to the pillows, her towel gets undone, and she protests with a  _ hmm _ . “It’ll dry all wrong,” Arabella argues, and that’s true. With some oil and a comb Arabella starts working her way through her hair again. Minerva is too tired to fight stray thoughts like ‘if this is how she treats her cats maybe I should try getting adopted’ and ‘I wonder if Americans call it catnip too.’ It’s easier, this time, of course it is, but that means it’s over far too soon. Minerva almost whines when her brush gets set aside with a  _ clack _ . “I’ll braid it?” Arabella offers, but she’s doing it already. 

“Thank you,” Minerva sighs, wishing this steady tugging at her hair could go on forever. She’ll need help getting it into a bun in the morning, but at least she won’t have to ask Poppy to touch her greasy hair and try to make something off of it. “Sorry,” she says, wanting and failing to say that she appreciates not being made to feel like an imposition. Like this is something you just do for other people.

“Don’t be,” Arabella murmurs. “You’ve such beautiful hair, it’s not a hardship.”

She’s braided most of the way down now, so Minerva can turn to look at her. She looks pleased, absorbed in her task. Minerva turns back to look down at her lap. “Didn’t think you’d be the - the sort of person to appreciate long hair,” she says, and it’s obvious that she does, but Arabella always pins away her own curls and seems entirely unbothered by how her hair is too short for that and so it won’t look neat. It’s only as she says it that she realises how else that could be interpreted, and Minerva’s cheeks heat again. Too late to take it back now. Arabella doesn’t seem to mind, she just hums, and when she’s done she neatly ties off the end of the braid with a little black ribbon from Minerva’s toiletry bag, then smoothes down the bathrobe around her shoulders with warm hands.

Arabella helps her into a clean nightshirt, and then under the covers and leaning back against the pillows. Minerva hasn’t felt this good in days, all her tension and irritation are gone, and she reaches out for Arabella’s hand without thinking about it. “Anything else?” Arabella asks, squeezing gently, and Minerva can’t think of anything, but she also doesn’t want to let go.

“Where’d you learn to do all this?” she asks. A wry smile, and she immediately holds on tighter to Arabella’s hand and opens her mouth to apologise because of course she - 

“That’s alright,” Arabella promises, letting her free hand settle the covers. “I’ve lost a fair few people,” she says, looking her age again quite suddenly. “And many of them did not have the access to House-elves most of you seem to have.”

“Most of us?” Minerva frowns. Does she mean Witches and Wizards?

But Arabella doesn’t seem eager to explain. “Yeah.” She takes her hand back and straightens out her skirts. “I’ll be off,” she says. And Minerva can’t help the way her face falls, but she nods. Can’t keep her here. “Oh don’t look at me like that,” Arabella chides, and she pets Minerva’s hair one more time. 

Then she goes, taking her absurd trolley bag with her, slumping her shoulders, shuffling her feet. Minerva lies down properly, thinking that now that her back isn’t hurting as much she might try to sleep a bit more. When she turns to lie on her side she sees her bedside table. A fresh glass of water, her wand, her hairbrush, and the little stuffed mouse. 


End file.
